Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience.The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived.

Theatre today, broadly defined, includes performances of plays and musicals. There are connections between theatre and the art forms of ballet, opera (which uses staged, costumed performances with singing and orchestral accompaniment) and various other forms.